Top editor escapes from New York Times' Book Review section, makeover (maybe extreme) to follow

Heidi Benson, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published 4:00 am, Monday, February 2, 2004

The New York Times is on trial again. But this time, it's the newspaper's Book Review section that is squirming under the hot, white lights.

The literary world has been on alert since it was announced in November that longtime Book Review editor Charles "Chip" McGrath was going to step down.

Debates ensued over who might succeed him and what it might take to rescue the section from its recent doldrums.

Then, in an online interview published Jan. 21, two top Times editors revealed that book coverage in both the Sunday section and the daily paper is headed for an extreme makeover, capsulized thusly: "Emphasize nonfiction books, demote literary fiction, promote (judiciously) commercial novels."

Cue uproar, as reactions to that formula quickly became a kind of Rorschach test.

Some saw the end of the world in the possible threat to contemporary literary fiction (that is, those novels that are neither "classics" nor beach reading).

Others saw a welcome corrective for an institution so powerful -- doldrums or not -- it can make or break literary careers.

But beyond the sheer entertainment value of a dust-up among the literati, the uproar revealed that -- despite concern about shortened attention spans and rampant anti-intellectualism -- Americans are hungry to participate in the world of ideas.

And, the perhaps inordinate attention given to the every hiccup of the New York Times Book Review indicates how few venues there are for such participation.

What is now known as the "Book Babes Brouhaha" began when New York Times executive editor Bill Keller and cultural editor Steven Erlanger were interviewed by the "Book Babes."

"I can't say we were misquoted," Keller said in one of the interviews he has since given to a handful of industry publications.

Heltzel told The Chronicle, "I think we caught the New York Times a little unaware.

"We had no agenda. We just wanted to ask 'What's going on?' I don't think they had any idea that there were so many people who care deeply about literary fiction and poetry."

Hammond concurred. "I'm very heartened by the lively discussion," she said. "It shows that people really care about books."

Are they pleased to have gotten people all fired up?

"It feels fabulous, because at least before the die was cast, there's a chance that the New York Times will think deeply," said Heltzel.

"I don't presume that we are going to tell the New York Times what to do, but I think Bill (Keller) is quoted in a subsequent interview saying they intend to increase fiction coverage, which I think has to be a response to this swirl of controversy," she said. "If we're having any influence, I hope it's a positive one."

It's the most-watched book section in the country, and publishers consider it the No. 1 place to be reviewed, she said.

"And of course, the paper has gotten so much coverage lately, with the Jayson Blair story -- people are fascinated with what goes on inside the building." (Blair is the former Times reporter whose repeated plagiarism and fabrications resulted in the resignation of executive editor Howell Raines.)

As Keller has said from the start, proposed changes to the Review will depend on who gets the top job, which will be announced this month.

The race over the job is the subject of furious gossip, since it will affect the direction of the Review. At press-time, four names were in the ring: Sarah Crichton, formerly publisher of Little, Brown and a former editor at Newsweek; author and Slate columnist Ann Hulbert; Benjamin Schwarz, literary editor of the Atlantic Monthly; and former Slate editor Judith Shulevitz, who Book Review readers know for her contributions to the Close Reader column.

No matter who is named, it's unlikely that Keller will change his tune on one thing -- increasing the emphasis on nonfiction.

One quote from the Babes interview raised the most hackles: "The most compelling ideas tend to be in the nonfiction world," Keller said. "Because we are a newspaper, we should be more skewed toward nonfiction."

"I adore fiction, but I do think that the New York Times Book Review does need more of a point of view, and I think the place where it will be deriving that persona will be largely from nonfiction," Schell told The Chronicle.

"Remember that we are in a critical period of world history and there are a lot of issues that need irrigating. Erlanger is a former foreign editor and won a Pulitzer in Moscow," said Schell, noting that he had recently had lunch with Erlanger and discussed these very issues.

"There is an awful lot of good fiction that would fit into this model," Schell added. "It doesn't mean that they're not going to cover nonpolitical fiction. I think they could do that and add some personality and more of a relevance to world problems."

"The national consciousness has been taken over by the technological and the pragmatic at the expense of things like fiction in the Book Review section, " he told The Chronicle.

Oddly enough, the New York Times' Book Review has less influence at City Lights now than it once did, even though it's so much more widely circulated, Ferlinghetti said, referring to the "national edition" that is distributed in Northern California .

"Whoever the new editor is, I hope he's a poetry reader. But I'm not very hopeful," said Ferlinghetti.

Another local bookseller, Elaine Petrocelli, who runs the two Book Passage stores -- in Corte Madera and the Ferry Building -- with her husband, Bill, calls her customers independent yet hooked on the Book Review.

"People who read book reviews read more than one," Petrocelli said. "Our customers read The Chronicle, the New Yorker, Time magazine, they read things online, and, of course, they read the New York Times.

"I'm a little more jaded personally -- one of my favorite things to do on Sunday morning is to count how many men are reviewed versus how many women. Some weeks the ratio is 12-2, some weeks it's all men, some weeks it's equal," she said.

Even as it is criticized for being formulaic and predictable, the Review dominates the industry largely because the big publishers -- even as they slash marketing and promotional budgets -- continue to spend their diminishing ad dollars for space in the Times book pages.

The biggest fear is that publishers will tailor their lists (the books they publish each season) to adapt to changes in the Review.

"If people in publishing see the New York Times doing something that is changing the way they handle books, the industry will respond -- because they need to get the coverage," Heltzel explained.

"Because there is less spent on advertising, books are marketing through editorial coverage. So if USA Today, the New York Times and Entertainment Weekly are all turning away from literary fiction, that's a sign for publishers that they need to be conservative about how much literary fiction they put on their list."

The Book Review has been in the business of kingmaking, Heltzel said. "They are so powerful that the first novelists that they choose to cover get a huge leg up in their careers."

Several of the industry insiders contacted by The Chronicle for this article declined to speak on the record or did not return calls. The editor of a new San Francisco literary magazine called it "premature to comment."

In the New York offices of one of the nation's top literary publishers, Alfred A. Knopf, the director of publicity had to laugh.

"Everyone's rushing to judgment, and an editor has not been named yet," said Paul Bogaards. "I guess it makes for interesting cocktail conversation."

Calling it "a good sign" that the Book Review is being re-evaluated, Bogaards said, "I can't imagine that the Times will ever ignore literary fiction. The people at the New York Times are smart enough to recognize good literary fiction when it comes out.

"Remember, John Updike was a first novelist at one point in his life, too. "